Low Modernism

            On Thursday morning I finished posting my translation of “Chasseur d'ivoire” (Ivory Hunter) by Serge Gainsbourg and listened once to his song “Amour année zéro” (Love In The Year Zero). It shouldn't take long to learn it since there are only three verses with repetitions. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos before a breakfast of canned peaches, fresh blueberries and Greek yogurt.

            At 9:45 I logged onto Zoom for my Global Modernisms lecture. 

            Our instructor Apala Das added five more hours to presentation slots, starting to include the first hour on Tuesdays. 

            She is going to upload all the reading materials so we can prepare for our respective presentations. She stresses that we shouldn't stress over the presentations. Just talk and engage with the concepts like you talk to your friends. Pretend you are explaining the ideas to them. It is not mandatory that we use PowerPoint. 

            It is easy to lose track with theory. Grapple with it by talking and writing. 

            I asked if the discussion board assignment is once or twice a week. She said it should be a response to every lecture. 

            She's put up PowerPoint. 

            Starting with Modernism. This course is on Transnational Modernism. Samuel Beckett is sometimes considered on the cusp of modernism and postmodernism. The purpose is to expand the temporal limits of modernism. There is difficulty of language and the forms are often obscure. The switch to free verse. Automatic writing by for example Gertrude Stein. US ex-patriots. Transatlantic between Europe and North America. 

            Automatic writing is more robotic than stream of consciousness as every thought and feeling that comes is written down.

            Imagism was a poetic movement of the early 20th Century with a focus of stripping poetry of extravagance. A focus on what is represented. For example if writing about a leaf not being sentimental about the leaf or reminded of something else. This kind of aesthetic constitutes the heart of modernism.

            Ekphrasis is a work of art that comments on another art-form such as a poem on a painting. One form looking at another. 

            It is limiting if one does not don't look at movements that run beside modernism. It is not in a vacuum. There are engagements with art and philosophy; changes in language and psychology were drastic. Art is supposed to represent the world so if the mind changes it changes. Science as a discipline changed the way we understood the world at the turn of the 20th Century. There were changes of emotions. There was a constantly reconstituted economy too. 

            Proto modernism includes the decadence movement. 

            High modernism accompanied the first world war and after from 1910 to 1930. The major modernist writers came at this time. The Depression is the beginning of late modernism. Late modernists are less known. In the late modernist period the non-western modernists begin. 

            The slides will be posted. 

            This is a stressful time and we should not pretend it's normal. Introduction to some tools to understand global modernism but not delve into it. Global modernism expands. In the 1960s is a field of literary criticism seen as the formalist period. Modernism looked through that lens but was already looking outside. 

            Essay by Georg Lukacs. 

            The essays we write for this course could go on MSA. PMLA is one of the most important. MLA is old while MSA is more radical and modernist. The essay “The New Modernist Studies” is not into theory but more a view of the field and its major concerns. It concretely lays down the foundation.

            Generally she'll go through the readings and read lines of the main parts. The writers Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz are scholars of modernism writing to expand the field. Their book Bad Modernisms looked at imperfect forms of modernism beyond high modernism. There was no space for the transnational so they expanded into spatial and temporal. 

            When making presentations highlighting core sentences is an important skill. “Expansion” is their key word. All periods have broadened temporal scope. The long 18th Century goes from the late 17th Century to the early 19th. Temporal expansion is beyond the typical period of the 1850s to the 1960s. How was the Renaissance a modernist period? 

            They focus on spatial expansions in this essay. Vertical expansion was covered more in Bad Modernisms. Working-class modernism is in bad modernism. The vertical view looks at high art vs pop art. 

            Global modernism as a study is in North America. The disciplines were constituted in North America. 

            Modernism is the art movement but modernity is the context. Modernization has to be looked at through interdiscipline and by expanding and opening up definitions. We are discouraged from using modernity out of context.

            Spacial axis is geographic. Vertical is social class based understanding such as pop music. We can expand modernism into the past. Every period has modernism. In the Renaissance they were experimenting. Classicism in the Renaissance is also modernism. Anglo Saxon literature had a modernist movement. 

            There are ways it is not modernist in those periods and so we have to see that too. 

            At 12:30 I had my Zoom meeting with Sarah about the unfair mark she gave me on my US Lit essay. She said right off that she had re-read my essay and that her decision on my mark stands. She argued that 70% is a good mark and that I should be glad I'm above the class average of 65%. I told her that her feedback on my essay is very subjective with comments about short paragraphs and lack of clarity, and whether or not points should be moved here or there. I said someone else might have had an entirely different view. She seemed frustrated and just said that I would have to just get Professor Morgenstern to read my essay. She reminded me of what I already knew that if the professor reviews one's essay the mark may not change, it may go up but it also may go down. I can't imagine anyone marking me lower than Sarah. I think the worst case will likely be that it stays the same. I already got an A- for the course but this dispute is a matter of principle because I'm proud of my writing. 

            I emailed Professor Morgenstern and asked her to read my essay. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a bike ride to Bloor and Palmerston and stopped at Freshco on the way home. They had cherries from Chile and so I decided to buy American and got six bags. I also bought a half-pint of raspberries, a pack of ground chicken, a container of Greek yogourt, a jug of orange juice, a jug of raspberry lemonade, a can of fruit cocktail, a jar of salsa, and a bag of kettle chips. The cashier asked, “How would you like to pay?” I said, “I'll pay with money today because I'm all out of tree bark.” I weighed 86 kilos when I got home.

            I edited my lecture notes and got caught up on my journal at around 20:00. 

            I wrote and posted my lecture comment on the discussion board:

            So we've got the key word of “expansion” and we look at the three fields of expansion: the temporal: into periods of history outside the traditional hundred years from the mid 19th to the mid 20th; the spacial: beyond the traditional focus on western Europe and North America; and the vertical: “below” the realm of high art into pop and folk art. On this last I was amused that when I did a web search for “modernist songs” all that came up was classical music, with no actual songs at all. 

            My takeaway is that it makes sense that modernism should be expanded in all these three fields. It seems to me that every civilization in every period of history would have an equivalent to Modernism at moments of advancement. That would mean that we are still experiencing Modernist art now which kind of pushes post-modernism off the precipice of time. I get the impression that we won't be looking as much at vertical expansion, which is sad because I think it is the most important in every time and location. Expanding into the “lower” classes of modernism shows us from where all of the other fields steal their ideas.

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast pork while watching an episode of The Addams Family. 

            This story begins with Morticia depressed because she's not doing anything meaningful with her life. She decides to become a sculptor and so Gomez gets her a big rock. Fester lends her his hammer and chisel that he uses for his brain surgery correspondence course. When she is done it pretty much still looks like a rock. Gomez brings in the art critic Bosley Swain and he hates the sculpture so much he begins to hit it repeatedly with his cane. Gomez tells Morticia that Swain loved it and then he hires the disreputable art dealer Sam Picasso to buy it with $50,000 that he gives him. But Morticia keeps making sculptures and Gomez keeps having to pay Picasso to buy them until he starts going broke. Picasso has been selling the sculptures back to the quarry. Gomez begs Morticia to give up sculpting because she is ignoring her family. Morticia is unmoved until she hears Wednesday and Pugsley say they are going to make fudge. Morticia goes to the kitchen and sees them preparing chocolate fudge with marshmallows, which is the opposite of what the Addams family considers a treat. She realizes she has been neglecting her family and gives up sculpting.